Author Archives: Kevin Houston

About Kevin Houston

Founder of BladesMadeSimple.com. Blade server evangelist.

Are Blade Servers Dead, or the Future of the DataCenter?

As I talk with customers, I often run into camps who either love blade servers or they absolutely hate them – and will never use them.  I even hear some people think blade servers are dying off, but I think that is far from the case.  In fact, I believe that blade servers could be the future of the datacenter and here’s why.   Continue reading

Blade Server Options for VMware vSAN ReadyNode

Last July I wrote a blog article showcasing the limited options listed on VMware’s vSAN ReadyNode listing.  Over the past 14 months, that list has grown so instead of updating that older post, I thought I’d provide a consolidated updated list of vSAN ReadyNode blade servers.

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Blade Server Comparison – September 2017

With the recent release of the Intel Xeon SP CPUs, I realized it’s been a year since I’ve updated my blade server comparison chart.  Below is an updated chart to help guide you to the best blade server for your project.

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Recommended Memory Configurations for Skylake CPUs

The new architecture of the Intel Xeon SP (aka Skylake) CPU includes more memory channels, which is creating some uncertainty on best practices.  In today’s post, I’ll show you the best configurations to consider to help drive high memory performance. Continue reading

What You Need to Know About Intel Xeon SP CPUs

Today Intel officially launches the next generation rack, tower and blade server CPU – the Intel Xeon Scalable Processor (SP), formerly known as “Skylake.”  Before you invest in this next generation compute, there are a few things you need to know. Continue reading

Lenovo First to Announce Blades with New Intel CPUs

On June 20th, Lenovo released information about their upcoming blade servers built on the upcoming Intel Xeon processor: the two processor ThinkSystem SN550 and the four processor ThinkSystem SN850.  Although there doesn’t appear to be any spec sheets yet on the products, there are a few things that can be extracted from the published 3D tour. Continue reading

Integrating Dell Blade Servers into Cisco Nexus Environments

I recently had some discussions with a customer looking to connect a Dell EMC PowerEdge M1000e to a Cisco Nexus and I was quite surprised at the number of resources available to assist in the project.  Below you will find links to the documents I found with the hope it will help you out in the near future.

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